James Hohmann at the Post says why Trump’s constant cheapening of language matters.

Bigger picture, the president has a pattern of diluting the potency of language. Trump cheapens the value of significant words by overusing and misusing them.

He encouraged violence against protesters as a candidate. He welcomed chants of “lock her up” about Clinton, whom he routinely described as “crooked.” He attacked the intelligence community: “Are we living in Nazi Germany?”

After the election, he coopted the term “fake news” — which once described a real phenomenon of made-up stories online. Now, by Politico’s count, leaders or state media in at least 15 countries have adopted the president’s denunciation to quell dissent and question human

The Times uses the normal restrained newspaper language to describe the infantile out of control disgusting president.

President Trump accused a top Democratic lawmaker on Monday of being “one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington,” calling Representative Adam Schiff of California “Little Adam Schiff” and accusing him of illegally leaking confidential information from the House Intelligence Committee.

In an early-morning tweet, Mr. Trump ominously said that Mr. Schiff “must be stopped,” though he did not elaborate.

The president’s insult came as Mr. Schiff is expected to call for a vote on Monday afternoon for the Intelligence Committee to release a Democratic rebuttal to the classified memo that the panel’s Republicans released on Friday, which accuses federal law

Also Trump today:

Little Adam Schiff, who is desperate to run for higher office, is one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington, right up there with Comey, Warner, Brennan and Clapper! Adam leaves closed committee hearings to illegally leak confidential information. Must be stopped!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2018

This disgusting man is head of state.

This is disgusting. Never once did I hear President Bush refer to a Member of Congress with such offensive language in private, much less in public. Decent people simply don't behave this way. https://t.co/Fl10S9NsEJ

— Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) February 5, 2018

https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/960592929575391233… Read the rest

Trump this morning:

The Democrats are pushing for Universal HealthCare while thousands of people are marching in the UK because their U system is going broke and not working. Dems want to greatly raise taxes for really bad and non-personal medical care. No thanks!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2018

UK Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt:

I may disagree with claims made on that march but not ONE of them wants to live in a system where 28m people have no cover. NHS may have challenges but I’m proud to be from the country that invented universal coverage – where all get care no matter the size of their bank balance https://t.co/YJsKBAHsw7

— Jeremy Hunt (@Jeremy_Hunt) February 5, 2018

Adam Schiff explains the creation of the wall between the presidency and the Justice Department:

In the run-up to the release of a deliberately misleading memo, some Republicans hyped the underlying scandal as “worse than Watergate.” When it was published, however, it delivered none of the salacious evidence of systemic abuse that it promised—only a cherry-picking of information from a single FISA court application. The memo’s release provided none of the vindication the President sought or would claim, but it was hugely consequential nonetheless, in how it undermined the system of checks and balances designed to insulate the FBI from White House meddling established in the wake of Watergate.

The years after the Watergate scandal saw multiple Congressional investigations

Meanwhile…government watchdogs spend government money to monitor Trump’s conflicts of interest…and the money they spend goes into Trump’s pocket. The government is paying Trump to let the government monitor his corrupt use of his office for self-enrichment. Nice racket.

An employee for the federal agency supervising the lease for the Trump hotel in Washington spent more than $900 for a stay there last year, according to a document reviewed by CNN — the first publicly known movement of federal taxpayer dollars into the highly scrutinized business.

The federal employee worked for the General Services Administration, the agency which supervises the lease of the Old Post Office building to the Trump Organization.
The GSA reimbursed the employee for a

Trump is feeling perky.

“Trump the orator outlines the greatness of America to Democrats’ disgust” https://t.co/XpirrtTY6V

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2018

The Moony paper calls him “Trump the orator” – because he read an address written by other people, from a teleprompter, slowly and with difficulty and not at all well. Some orator.

Also, applauding himself. Also Mussolini-face.

Rasmussen just announced that my approval rating jumped to 49%, a far better number than I had in winning the Election, and higher than certain “sacred cows.” Other Trump polls are way up also. So why does the media refuse to write this? Oh well, someday!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2018

Funny how he always cites … Read the rest

Thug Donald says hell yes release the memo, the memo is out.

The House Intelligence Committee made the memo public after a week of pleading from senior national security officials not to disclose the classified details, reading it aloud on a conference call with reporters after President Trump declassified the memo.

“A lot of people should be ashamed of themselves and much worse than that,” Mr. Trump said on Friday.

The memo alleges that senior government officials favored Democrats over Republicans and accuses federal law enforcement officials of abusing their authorities when they sought permission to surveil a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.

Never mind the fact that Carter Page was already dirty, independently of Trump; that he … Read the rest

Trump has said sure, go ahead.

President Trump cleared the way on Thursday for the release of a secret memo written by Republican congressional staffers and said to accuse federal law enforcement officials of abusing their surveillance authorities.

Mr. Trump, who had a brief window to block the memo’s disclosure on national security grounds, was expected to tell Congress on Friday that he had no objections and would likely not request any material be redacted, according to a senior administration official. It would then be up to the House Intelligence Committee, whose Republican leaders have pushed for its release, to make the document public.

The president’s decision came despite a growing chorus of warnings from national security officials who

Another This Looks Bad item for Mueller’s note pad: last July, that Times story about the Russia meeting at Trump Tower, the scramble on the flight home from Yurrup to put out a statement by Team Trump saying we talked about adoption and nothing else.

The latest witness to be called for an interview about the episode was Mark Corallo, who served as a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s legal team before resigning in July. Mr. Corallo received an interview request last week from the special counsel and has agreed to the interview, according to three people with knowledge of the request.

Keep that bit about resigning in July in mind; it’s important.

Mr. Corallo is planning to tell Mr. Mueller

Chapter 785 of Trump doesn’t know what the rules are and he doesn’t care either. CNN reports:

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein visited the White House in December seeking President Donald Trump’s help. The top Justice Department official in the Russia investigation wanted Trump’s support in fighting off document demands from House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes.

But the President had other priorities ahead of a key appearance by Rosenstein on the Hill, according to sources familiar with the meeting. Trump wanted to know where the special counsel’s Russia investigation was heading. And he wanted to know whether Rosenstein was “on my team.”

We know he’s been told repeatedly that the whole entire Justice Department is purposely and carefully … Read the rest

Al Jazeera gently points out mash notes to Trump’s speech from white supremacists.

White supremacists quickly took to social media to comment on the president’s comments, with many of them praising the characterisation of Americans as “dreamers”.

In a Twitter post, David Duke, former leader of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a racist organisation popular in the southern US for over a century after slavery ended in the 1860s, thanked the president.

https://twitter.com/DrDavidDuke/status/958534057159249921

Yes, some Americans Dream of a White Country.

During Trump’s electoral campaign in 2016, he came under fire for hesitancy to disavow Duke, who had pledged his support for the then Republican candidate.

In an interview with CNN, Trump had said of Duke and other white supremacists

Roger Cohen at the Times is scathing.

Trump portrayed a dark and menacing world in which immigrants, who stand at the heart of the American idea, were equated with gangs, murderous criminals and “horrible people.”

In his 80-minute speech, the word “woman” did not come up once. Other words or phrases never mentioned included “peace,” “human rights,” “equality,” “Europe,” “multilateral,” “civil rights” and “alliance.”

Those are all bad, liberal concepts, not fit for a Real Man™.

If there was a theme, it was the demonization of immigrants and of the rest of the world, combined with an exaltation of American might.

So pretty much a fascist-xenophobic type theme.

In perhaps his clearest signal of contempt for the views of

How did Trump’s big evening out go?

Greg Sargent at the Post says he lied a lot.

President Trump’s State of the Union speech is being widely described as an effort to move past the chaos, anger, polarization and divisiveness that have been unleashed by his first year in office.

Oh please. Don’t be ridiculous. If Trump wanted to move past the chaos, anger, polarization and divisiveness that he sprays all over us every day, he could just do that. He delivered a speech that Stephen Miller (no rose himself) wrote for him; it would be criminally credulous to treat anything conciliatory he said in it as meaningful.

The speech tried to “move past tumult,” proclaimed the front page

This miserable louse…

The day after he fired James Comey as director of the FBI, a furious President Donald Trump called the bureau’s acting director, Andrew McCabe, demanding to know why Comey had been allowed to fly on an FBI plane from Los Angeles back to Washington after he was dismissed, according to multiple people familiar with the phone call.

McCabe told the president he hadn’t been asked to authorize Comey’s flight, but if anyone had asked, he would have approved it, three people familiar with the call recounted to NBC News.

The president was silent for a moment and then turned on McCabe, suggesting he ask his wife how it feels to be a loser — an apparent

The Atlantic too is puzzled by McCabe’s abrupt departure…or defenestration, as the url but not the title calls it.

McCabe was expected to stick around until March. Instead, he abruptly departed Monday, though he’ll still be collecting those benefits. The deputy director is taking what is ominously known as “terminal leave”—he has accrued enough leave to depart his post now but not officially retire until benefits vest.The reasons for McCabe’s abrupt exit are not clear, though. It’s not even clear whether McCabe’s exit came as a surprise to FBI insiders or not. Some reports say yes, while others say no. For what it’s worth, NPR’s Carrie Johnson said in December that McCabe might use accrued leave to depart before